Tales From the Minivan

This morning Ciaran, Finn, Mackenzie and I attended our Local Breastfeeding Challenge. I have to give all the credit to Sarah for putting together the great gift bags and prizes! I think everyone really enjoyed themselves.

I came up with the idea of making some matching t-shirts for the boys and I. We all know breastfeeding works by Supply and Demand, so I decided to take a little spin on that! My shirt said iSupply, Finn’s said iDemand and Ciaran’s- iDemand More. I used the same font Apple does and put the little logo under it. Here’s a few pics from our morning:

This afternoon is all about getting the house ready for my mom. Andrew, Finn and I are taking a little vacation for a week down to Grand Cayman! My mom is coming to stay at our house with Ciaran, Liam and Mackenzie. Thank you Mom!

As for the Dinner Fix Challenge, I still plan on making meals while away, as our resort has a full kitchen, I already have my trusty veggie peeler packed and some meals ideas planned for the week!

My next post hopefully will be from the sun-drenched Cayman Islands (if I can find a wireless connection!)

I’m really looking forward to participating in CPO’s upcoming Dinner Fix Challenge! It’s for those of us that have been struggling with getting dinner on the table and a helping hand to get our families back to the table. Starting October 1st CPO will be featuring a 6 week community challenge to help us all get back into meal planning and eating healthy.
The challenge will offer a step by step approach to putting together meal plans with the help of Sandi Richard, Canadian Mom and professional meal planner. I was mentioning the Dinner Fix Challenge to a friend of mine the other day and mentioned that Sandi Richard was going to be helping us, and she instantly got excited. She religiously uses Sandi’s first book “Life’s on Fire- Cooking For the Rushed”, and accredits Sandi with “teaching her how to cook”. Sandi is also the host of the Food Network Canada’s show “Fixing Dinner”. Needless to say I’m very excited about this!

Other than getting organized with a meal plan and sticking to it, our biggest challenge is getting everyone to eat the same meal when it’s served. You see, Liam is an extremely picky eater. My mother jokes that he’s payback for what I put her through when I was a child, as I too was a picky eater. He’d be more than happy to eat a bowl of cereal at every meal if he had the choice. What I need are some kid friendly recipes for a picky eater, so if anyone has any to share I’d love for you to post them in The Dinner Fix Challenge Board.
Here’s one recipe that everyone in the family loves, it’s my recipe for homemade pizza dough. I’ve scoured the Internet for good recipes and combined different ingredients to get a really good combination. I’ve mentioned this one on our recent What’s For Dinner Podcast. This recipe is easiest made using a kitchen mixer with a dough hook, but can also be made by hand, but you may need to do a little more kneading.

Cara’s Easy Pizza Dough

Ingredients:

Approx 6 cups of flour (you may need more or less)

2 cups of warm water (not too cool, it should be hot but still comfortable test with your hand)

2.5 Tablespoons of Yeast

1 Tablespoon of Honey

2 Tablespoons of Sugar

½ cup of Olive Oil (I usually mix this half Canola, Half Olive Oil

1 tsp of salt

Directions:
Pour in water. Add Honey, Sugar and Salt. Stir until dissolved. Add yeast and mix for about 10 seconds. Add 1 cup of Flour and mix. Next add Oil and mix until blended. Add the rest of the flour a little at a time and mix for a minute or two, using the dough hook in your mixer the dough should start to ball up. If not you may need to add a little water until it does. If you mixture is still very sticky and wet, add more flour. You’ll know when it’s the right consistency because it will form into a ball and look like dough. At this point you can knead the dough, or just leave in the bowl and let it rise for about 45 minutes in a warm place. When you return it will have doubled in size. Give it a punch and spread out on your pizza pans. Bake at 400 degrees for approx 17-20 minutes.

For a change we like Chicken and sweet peppers as our main ingredient and an alternative to tomato sauce. My husband like salsa as the base sauce, the some chicken cooked with taco seasoning, sweet peppers (orange yellow & red) and some grated marble cheese. Mackenzie’s favorite is BBQ chicken, we use our favorite BBQ sauce as the base with all of the same ingredients. The boys like classic pepperoni and I generally make them they’re own personal size mini pizza’s on my mini pizza stones.

If you end up with extra dough, why not make up and extra pizza and freeze it?

The past seven days have been as absolute BLUR! The whole family has been so busy! I’ll get to the title of this post a little further down so keep reading!

Our busy week started off with last Saturday. Andrew’s good friend got married and both Andrew and Liam were in the wedding party. Andrew being the Best Man and Liam the Ring Bearer. He looked so adorable in his little suit! The funny thing is that I actually bought this suit before he was even born. We were browsing Value Village one day and I spotted it, and figured that at one point he’ll need one to wear, who knew that it would fit him perfectly when that time came upon us! Here are a few pics from the day!

Liam with his “Flower Girl”

All of the Groomsmen- Andrew is behind Liam

Finn at the reception

Next was Ciaran’s first day of Preschool. He has been so excited about starting school for weeks, then he got there and froze up! Poor little guy just did not want me to leave him. There seemed to be a quick window of opportunity and I took it and ran, I guess he cried for a little while but eventually warmed up to and did great! His second day went great, no drop off issues, no tears. Then came day 3. There was a 3^rd teacher there that he had not met yet, and this completely through him off. I stayed with him for about a half an hour but he was just not settling in so we decided to all leave. I don’t want to push him into this if he’s not ready. He’s been attending playgroups with me with him since he was born, but this is the first time I’m not there with him, so I think it may take a little more time for him to feel comfortable with it! Here’s hoping next week goes better!

Thought I’d show a couple of pics from his first day.

Next came Mackenzie’s eleventh Birthday! As we do every year we got out for a family dinner on the evening of her birthday. Let’s just say this one well be a very memorable one! Definitely “BlogWorthy” in my eyes! We decided to go to Pizza Delight, for those of you not familiar, it’s an Atlantic Canadian chain, that has been branching out across the country. When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised that if it’s your Birthday- you “Eat Free” Mackenzie decided that since it was her 11^th Birthday she should get an adult meal, as she no longer qualifies for the Kids Menu! She ordered the Super Donair and Ceasar Salad combo, minus the lettuce and tomatoes.
When the food arrived, it was brought out by another server other than our own, we noticed right away that Mackenzie’s Donair had lettuce and tomato on it and I quickly let this server know it was wrong. She sputtered something about it not being her table, and then proceeded to roll her eyes at us! There were many witnesses as we were a table of 5 adults along with the boys and Mackenzie’s friend. She took the meal away and a few minutes later the proper one was returned with an apology from our server. She did a quality check and asked how I like the pizza I ordered, rarely do I ever say anything if I don’t like the taste of something, but I told her that I just didn’t like the taste of it, the sauce was just too tangy for me. Still hungry I made it known to Kenz that if she was full I’d be happy to finish anything she had leftover for her. She passed me the rest of her Ceasar Salad as she wanted to save room for her Birthday cake. This is when things went down hill.

I started to eat the rest of her Ceasar Salad, and nearly finished it when I saw something odd in the bottom of the bowl in the dressing. Then I quickly realized what it was! An insect! Not a house fly, mosquito or spider, this was a roach the size of my finger nail! Just as I found it the server was clearing our plates and I felt ill almost immediately. She spotted it too , quickly apologized and whisked the bowl away, saying she would speak to her manager. She came back and said that we would not have to pay for the salad. I pointed out that this was my daughters “Free” meal. She then said, I guess there’s not much we can do then! I kept my cool, none of the kids or anyone else in the restaurant were even aware of what had happened and I wanted to keep it that way. Then my mother and MIL spoke up that this was not acceptable compensation and that we wanted to speak to the manager. The manager was not even working, she was calling her at home. We were then offered a coupon for this location only for the same meal and again told they were sorry this was the best they could do as they wash all of their salad and their kitchen was very clean. Not comforting to me at all or my husband, who immediately stopped eating the pizza after seeing the roach. We all let her know that we were disappointed on how this was handled and that the manager should have been there to deal with this.

The next morning I reported this to Pizza Delight’s head office and was told I would be called back by the district manager, that day or the next…3 days later and still no call! GRRR! Here are some of the happier moments of the night!

September 11^th is a memorable day with most people, but it’s a very happy day in our house as Mackenzie celebrates her eleventh birthday this year!
I thought it’ would be nice to share some photos of her on most of her birthdays leading up to her special 11^th!
So here’s sweet Mackenzie through the years!

Almost Age 1 September 1997

September 1998- Age 2

Age 3- 1999 Her Pokemon Party

Age 4- My Little Ladybug

September 2002 Age 6

Age 7- 2003

2004- Age 8

Age 9-2005

Age 10- 2006

September 11, 2007- Age 11

Liam survived his first day as a full-day Kindergartener! He was very excited about riding the school bus to school so Andrew walked him and Mackenzie to the bus stop and I followed them out to the school. It seems that his teacher is sick and was not going to be staying the entire day, I hope this is not too confusing for the kids!
Once I got him settled in he felt right at home, he barely looked up from the toy he was focused on to say goodbye. My little boy seemed so grown up today. When I arrived after school to pick him up for an appointment, he was actually upset to see me! He wanted to take the bus home!

Mackenzie and Liam on the front porch

Lining up for the bus

Since getting home from our trip to Maine we’ve been in Back to School mode! Trying to get everyone to bed at a decent hour again. Andrew even set the alarm and walked the Mackenzie and Liam to the bus stop 2 days before school even started to get everyone back into the routine.

Today was Mackenzie’s first day of Middle School, Grade 6 Where has the time gone? She is very excited about this year and has most of her good friends in her class. The other thing she’s excited about is that she already knows her teacher well, as she’s the same teacher she had for Grade 2!

Liam didn’t start today, they do a staggered start for the kids entering Kindergarten, so he’ll start tomorrow. We did do a “dry-run” today, when Andrew walking them to the bus stop and me following in the van to the school. Once we arrived I wanted to show Liam where his class would be, where his locker was located, and if his teacher wasn’t too busy introduce him to her. We got to look around his classroom for a few minutes. Ciaran was very excited that they had a sand table! Last week at his preschool orientation he kept going on and on about the sand table and how “his school” had sand!

After getting Mackenzie settled in I took Liam in for a very needed haircut. Here’s the before shots, we decided to let the boys hair grow all summer, but since he’s going to be the ring-bearer at a wedding this weekend, I thought they may appreciate that his hair was a teeny bit shorter. He’s the before shot:

Bedtime routines and going much smoother, although it was great to stay up late, it’s nice to have the evenings to ourselves again! The boys know now that after story time it’s time for bed and haven’t really put up a fuss, I was expecting it to be much harder.

So Back to School is bittersweet, it’s been so nice to have Andrew home this summer but he also went Back to Work this morning! Tomorrow is going to be very strange in the house and I think poor Ciaran will be lost without Liam for the next week until his preschool class starts up! Speaking of Ciaran, he is officially Potty Trained! I talk more about this in an upcoming Podcast on Potty Training and what worked for us!